A.M. Vitals: Genzyme Points to MS Drug As Sign Sanofi Bid is Too Low

By Katherine Hobson

Drug Projections: When Genzyme rejected as too low an $18.5 billion takeover offer from Sanofi-Aventis, the U.S. biotech cited “the tremendous future upside” of Campath, its experimental drug for multiple sclerosis. But as Dow Jones Newswires reports, that future upside isn’t certain; while Genzyme expects the drug would be worth more than $3 billion in annual sales if approved by the FDA, analysts put future sales at less than $1 billion, DJN says. More trial data on the drug are expected to be available next year, and if approved, Campath wouldn’t hit the market until late 2012, DJN says.

C-Section Findings: Nearly one-third of U.S. births are via cesarean section, and a new study says that more than half of those surgeries occur before the woman goes into labor, the NYT reports. The study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggests that drugs used to induce labor contribute to the increase in C-sections, as does the tendency for women with a history of C-section to continue to get them in subsequent pregnancies, the paper says. (New guidelines are intended to boost the rate of vaginal birth after cesarean, or VBAC.)

Piece of the Pie: IBM, Microsoft and Dell are jockeying for a piece of China’s nascent market for electronic medical records, which is now fragmented and dominated by Chinese companies, the WSJ reports. One IBM technology initiative will attempt to quantify the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medical treatments, the paper says. Sparked by Chinese health-care overhaul efforts, the country’s IT market will grow nearly 20% per year, hitting $2.4 billion in 2013, according to an analyst for a research firm quoted by the WSJ.

Credit Probe: The practice of offering health-care credit cards to patients to finance services — such as dental work and chiropractic treatments — not always covered by insurance is under investigation in several states, Kaiser Health News reports. Patient advocates and investigators tell KHN that many people think they’re signing up for an extended-payment plan, not an actual credit card — which of course, can carry large interest rates. Other patients say they were charged by providers for work that hadn’t been done yet, KHN says.